Shocking Pastels!

Remember this ad campaign? I do. Never mind the cigarettes, just look at how he's dressed. I knew guys who dressed like that when we hit up the clubs in Providence in our 20's.

If you were going to JR's Fastlane (oooh! Fastlane!) or Sh-Booms, Baby Head or say the Lupo's, you MUST have the proper attire to catch the girl's eyes in 1985.

We knew one guy, who we nicknamed, “Johnny Hardhat.” He won that name by being an awful braggart about anything related to plumbing, electrical, framing, concrete, welding...you get the point. He was another “Why, I know it all...I could build you a house ontop of Mt Washington if I so felt it!”

Johnny Hardhat had the audacity, or more likely, a total lack of taste, to show up at some URI hangout on Matunuck beach wearing pretty much what Don Johnson wore on TV. He got the look down right though. White linen jack, linen pants and this screaming pink flamingo Izod golf shirt. Oh, and I forgot...the WHITE shoes for god's sake!

Ok, I will admit here. This is about as far as I went aping that style. I rarely wore socks with my topsiders when I wore them. I never owned white linen pants nor a Banana Republic sports jacket. But, coming from a DeLasallian high school, I learned one NEVER wears socks with topsiders. How gauche!

I still don't wear socks with topsiders. Some habits die hard.

Anyways, some of us guys were dressed like Havana Bob back then. I guess it's not that bad really, considering the Cranston High Rise hair we saw on some of the girls from back then.

“Hi! Where ya from?” “I'm from Craaaaan-stin!” say would say, snapping her gum.

Eye-talian guidettes. There was something cute about them under all that hair and eye make up from then.

Fledgling Upstarts!

When you're older, you sometimes can't help but offer advice. I hope when I do, I don't seem superior doing it, but my motivation is just out of good will.

A friend, Tammy H. (not her real name, but she'll probably figure this out anyway) was complaining to me about how her girlfriends incessantly gossip about her. “My life, “ she said, “isn't that entertaining, but I guess that's all they have to talk about since they're married and bored.”

I advised her how I handle gossip. Since it's impossible to stop it, I just tell everyone I know this:

“Please, gossip about me. Make it memorable, in fact..MAKE IT UP! Because, since people gossip about me...I will gossip about THEM” I'm a great believer in the “glass houses” truism.

There now. That's an easy way to square it with the bank, huh?

Now a great story about “squaring it up.”

Sons have various relationships with their Dads. They are innumerable really. They can run the gamut from good, fostering and healthy relationships to abusive, destructive ones. Or there's the Dad who was never in the picture. So you get the point?

My relationship with my Dad always ran hot and cold as it depended on the circumstance of the day. There were times when I hated the Hitler and other times when I was amazed at what he knew. Also, he had this great asset of having both feet on the ground and this ability to read reality as it lay in front of him without coloring it.

But, stories of “Dear Ol' Dad” are boring, so here's one where I fucked him over at the age of seven.

Being a kid isn't easy. You are always struggling for more freedoms to be accommodated. Why not? Your selfish, single minded and greedy when little. But, there's that damned parent in your way either looking out for your best interests or just trying to quiet their day for their selfish convenience.

It was a Saturday, I was playing with the others down at the end of the street where all the neighborhood kids would meet. It was around noon when my Dad shouted down the street for me to come home to eat lunch, and I being far too involved in whatever game it was we were playing, I stalled for a good ten minutes before I started onto home.

When I finished lunch I was about halfway out the door, my Dad stopped and blurted out an ORDER that I was to stay in for the rest of the afternoon due to my dilly dallying when he called me to lunch earlier.
 

“What?” I thought to myself? Then I shot back at him “Why??! Why do I have to stay in the house? It's SATURDAY!!” As a kid, parental logic must always be questioned when it starts curbing your desires.

“Why? Why? Because I said so, that's why.” he finally said.

Without knowing it, my Dad was instilling in me a good sense of rebelliousness and hatred of authority at a young age. Truth be known, I overheard my Uncle more than once advise my Dad that he shouldn’t be so overbearing when it comes to raising his boys. So I was not acting out just from a young boy's impetuousness all the time.

I submitted to Dad's demand. What was I going to do at seven anyway? I moped around the house seething at the injustice. I then ended up in the cellar, trying to invent some fun thing to do when I came across some nails, 40d framing nails. They're a good 2.5 inches in length.

So I played around with these, dropping them from my fingers like a B-17 drops bombs, onto imaginary German installations...making those booming sounds to myself, when an idea hit me like a flash.

“Nails flatten tires...these nails could flatten asshole's car tires out in the driveway too..” 

So I went upstairs and managed to go outside w/o alerting Dad to the fact I was no longer in house. I made it “look” like I was just a kid playing near his car. By the rear left tire, I placed the pointed end of one nail against his tire so that when he backed out into the street, the nail would drive itself in from the weight.

 

I then went back inside my house to fool around and a couple of hours later my Dad took off for Sears/Roebuck on Main St in Providence like he did every Saturday, to hang out in his childhood neighborhood.

With him gone, I flew out of the house and back to my friends at the end of the street to play games and whatnot. I came home around 5ish when Mom would be serving supper, but Dad wasn't home yet.

My Mom was wondering just where in the hell her husband was and about 40 minutes later Dad arrived with a great story.

“Maureen, you wouldn't believe the crap I had to put up with. I was on the Division street bridge when the car started going, flump, flump flump and I pulled over to find the right rear tire flat.”

“Did you ever get that spare fixed like I told you too?” My Mom correctly surmising that Dad didn't and hence his lateness. 

“Well, that doesn't matter now...I managed to get it into that gas station on East Ave and they as they were fixing it, the mechanic called me in to show me what had flattened the tire...it was this HUGE nail!”'

I, eating this all up, blurted out, “Was it a shiny new one?” This was a slip up of my own, as I was reveling in the crime I had committed and just HAD to say something and be a part of this conversation. It's true, going back to the scene of the crime and taunting the detectives to catch you is a thrill.

I can still see my Dad's face as he looked at me to this very day. It was a look of dawning realization. His face said w/o any words...”How the hell did you know that it was a new nail?” That transformed into...”It was YOU who did this!” However, I sat there looking as bewildered as a seven year old kid could be about road hazards to tires and I think this may have saved my ass. My Dad was looking at me, with just barely enough circumstantial evidence, far too shy to convict me...and powerless to act. Powerless because what seven year old knows how to flatten a car tire..or can one?

He had to let it be.

Wonderful...

I've heard many ex-military types bitch that the Iraqi insurgency would NEVER fight the American forces one to one, on the desert plain in an open battle, that the insurgency always did it from shadows and short attacks. The Vietnam vets had the same complaints about the Viet Cong as well.

Well, think about it. What poor, weak and rag tag band with inferior weapons would take on a power that is the US Armed Forces on an equal stage? You'd be dead meat in six minutes. A young son is that too, powerless against the far reaching dominion of DAD.

I became an insurgent, a VC. And I won that battle that day.

This was my start, any son's start really, to where we reach that age where we can outwit our own Dads and become...equal and then share the power to where one day, we surpass them.

Sons should perform coup d'etats on their Dads. You better if you are to grow up.



Moon So Strong It's Casting Shadows.

I'm not very sure, but I swear I've been ill with a strange malady. I feel I have half of the symptoms of your regular flu. Malaise, tiredness and at times this feeling my brain is half “on” with a diffuse headache that I can sort of localize but then slips scrutiny. Thank God, I don't have the snot, coughing and other slimy aspects of the flu. Who knows what the hell it is.

I suppose this has been going on for about a week and flares up at different times during the day. The malaise will dawn on me and for a good several hours, I drag.

Last night I came home from work, took care of the fur kid and flipped on my various electronics, the stereo and computer and settled in for a night of reading. As I was doing this, I could barely keep my eyes open. I then admitted to myself I should just give up and go to bed, at 8:45PM. I rarely go to bed this early. It was a quick surrender to this fatigue.

I had at fitful sleep, waking up several times during the night till I finally roused myself at 4AM. I can't lie in bed fully awake for more than twenty minutes hoping I can go back to sleep, so I might as well get up. I get up, get the dog outside for his morning sniff, piss and what not when I notice something oddly beautiful. The moonlight.

My backyard, the neighborhood and entire sky was glowingly alight with this ghostly blue cast. To add to this, the temperatures were fairy warm for 4am in early February with a light wind. Also, at this hour in the morning, there is little sound to be heard; even the characteristic drone of the city is fairly tempered at this hour.

Most mornings when I'm out letting the dog do his business, I have a disposition of “will you hurry up already?” In winter, waiting for the dog to finish up can make me peevish, as it's damned freezing out most mornings here. But, this time, I walked around the yard, front and back and then up and down the street just to witness this pleasing, moon created phosphorescence.

I felt good then.

I don't always get these moments, and am surprised when I do, but it was worth it to finally crawl out of bed this morning.

And perhaps this ailment is coming to an end soon.

“There’s Been a Load of Compromising, on the Road to My Horizon.”

As you age you can reach the point where you can finally think, compare and contrast your life with that of your Dad’s. It’s not really possible when younger as the relationship is always Dad/Son. But when you reach the age your father had once been and where he was in life, you can more easily understand why he was the way he was. You are both men and can understand.

I’ve mentioned this before, my Dad was a “company man.” That was back when you gave your life over to the business you were employed with and showed enormous loyalty. Back then versus today, that loyalty was REPAID.

He scrambled, fought, and plotted his career life from bank teller till he reached the lofty position of CEO of a small chain of banks called First Federal Savings and Loan of Providence. It’s long since been defunct however. I can remember the day his contract for the new position was splayed across the kitchen table as he and my Mom discussed the good fortune and what to do next.

What to do next. Oh, he had plans.

I once overheard what he was going to plan for his sons, my brother and I. Due to our personalities, we required different career paths. My brother, who had a better school record than I (and probably an IQ of 150, no joke) was going to go study corporate management at Bryant, perhaps Brown University for the coveted MBA and higher. As for me? I was to be a tax attorney as I had the real ugly talent for never giving up once I got started at something. I clamped down like a pit bull on certain things if I wanted too. Hell, I still can be like that.

Well, those plans never came to fruition as my Dad slumped on the kitchen table on a cold February day a year later and died due to walking pneumonia. It’s the same thing that killed Jim Henson at a young age as well. It’s an odd thing walking pneumonia, you can get along for two weeks with it being a mild nuisance and then the last six hours it rages through lungs like Patton’s Third Army.

So, with Dad’s plans out of the way, we kids developed our own paths. And to think back, it was probably for the best as kids develop into their own people, not their parents ideal of what they should be.

So, I’ll be 48 soon and I’ve beat both my father’s and brother’s life span. I’m not a tax attorney nor could have I ever have been really. Dry office occupations never did hold out much allure to me. In fact, I first went into a career that’s the anathema to high finance and that was social work! Dad inadvertently raised a pinko socialist son. Well he didn’t really, but my experiences as a kid, young adult, taught me this world is way too fucked up and needed a janitor to help sop up the messes of people’s lives. But, that’s another long story…

*****

Here’s a telling memory why my Dad liked success.

I forget the movie. It was an old typical WW2 flick in which there was a scene that I noticed my Dad was wholly focused on, and seemed a bit frightened by.

The scene showed a captain chewing out a second lieutenant . The lieutenant was told to stand at attention while the captain told him (and I’m paraphrasing)

“I’m giving you all the goldbrickers, the lay abouts, the losers…and I’m holding YOU responsible for their work and it better be done RIGHT! The captain says.

The captain then tosses his lit cigarette on the floor and orders the lieutenant to “put that out” and the junior officers bends and stuffs the cigarette out.

“Don’t forget just WHO your commanding officer is! I’m going to make your life a living hell if you don’t follow my orders to the tee. The fitness reports I write up are going to be looking for the smallest failures I can find!“

The jist of that was here is this prick senior officer who hates the guts of this poor lieutenant and the other fact is, the military owns your ass and you just can’t leave.

You’re stuck where you are.

My Dad was riveted to that scene in the movie.

Ok, let’s move it up to 1976 and tale #2.

The mid seventies gave birth to the Three Martini Lunch. The high finance guys would rotate where they’d have lunch in Providence then and of course, you can’t eat your veal w/o a good few Manhattans.

Well, as my dad admitted to my Mom later, he was pretty buzzed when he shot straight though a red light on Westminster St and was pulled over by a Providence cop. The cop never suspected that my Dad was DWI and the fact remains, there were NO blood/alcohol tests or laws then. But the cop wrote up my Dad for blowing through the intersection.

I can remember my Dad on the phone with his lawyer and wanting to dispute his obvious guilty actions. When he hung up, I overheard Dad saying his lawyer would “get it squashed” in court fairly easily as Dad was a CEO of a major financial interest downtown.

One day after court, he came home triumphantly, telling my Mom, “Maureen! It was beautiful, Repucci made a total ass out of that cop on the stand. He had him explaining why he was “bothering an upstanding member of the Providence business community.”

Yeah, my Dad got off scot free on this little crime, and he reveled in it.

My Dad had “arrived.” He achieved that position in society where you had some power and could be above it all. He was no longer that young lieutenant in the movie that could be kicked around by abusive power.

And this tells me, my Dad was that little guy who was kicked around a lot at one time. I may be wrong, as I don’t know for sure, but Dad sure had learned plenty of motivation to become the Big Dog

It Worked!

I admit, I have gone full geek. I have built my own computer.

Every Christmas, I buy myself something that I really enjoy. The last few years it has been buying components to my stereo system that I’ve been working on for a few years. Well, that stereo was completed last year and it sounds wonderful to me. Time to move on to something different.

For the last several months, I’ve been reading up on just how computers operate. I cannot understand it all as I’m no electronics engineer. But, these things are mesmerizing to me and how they work. Whatever is going on inside that black box is tempting for me to find out.

I’ve always been bitten by curiosity…always. If I cannot understand something I’m interested in, I have a tendency to go full-tilt learning it until I do. If you want to see someone be obsessed over something, see me when I’m focusing on some project. I’ll probably totally blow you off as I’m diving into a problem and when done, I’ll address you.

To sum it up in a nutshell, I invent projects just so that I can satiate that drive in me to know something totally new. Do I like challenges? Sure, but only those that interest me.

So, here’s a bunch of pics showing the progress of it all

Here's the empty case...now I have to fill it.

This is the power suppy with it's hydra headed wires all over the place.  They all have to find a home.

Power supply screwed into it's case.  Cut my hand a few times on those sharp sheet metal edges there.

 

The mother board installed.  I had already installed the CPU and heatsink and fan prior...

Another shot from a shallower angle. 



All the wires hooked up where they supposed to go...I was hoping...

The final build.  Everything in.  Wires, video card, DIMMS and whatnots...

Ok. I was really hoping when I put the cover in this thing, plug it in, hit the on switch the thing would fire up and not shower sparks and smoke.   I didn't turn it on for a good hour.  I went over everything about 5 times making sure it was all there.  And then I started to wonder what the hell am I going to do if nothing happened.  There is NO warranty on this build and who do I go to...the only person would be myself...augh! 

I had read when you do power it on, all fans should spin, and the computer should do something called a POST, which is a self check.  After that, it should ask me what I want to to do and that would be going into BIOS. 

Here's what happened...

It worked!  The BIOS detected the two drives, hardward and all the other thingies I put in.  Now all I have to do is get Windows 7 operating systemt and I have a new computer to play  with.

Next, perhaps I should build an MRI?





Over the River and Through the Woods!



Yum!

Thanksgiving is upon us once again and some memories of the ones past come to me.

To begin with, I came from a small Irish family. Secondly, the Irish could never cook even if their lives depended on it. Our family dinners weren’t horrid, it was just that the available choice and fare was rather limited. Limited by the fact the Irish can’t cook anything besides the simplest meat and potato type dishes.

As a kid, my mom would cook this each and every year. A turkey, mashed potatoes, gravy, disgusting squash and that bouncy, cylindrical thingy called Ocean Spray cranberry sauce. Now all the food she cooked was pretty decent, but that squash…ugh.

The problem with squash was that when put on your plate, some of the liquid would run into the other food on your plate. In my child’s mind, it would poison and ruin the other food there. I’d sit there deftly pushing the squash to a part of the plate where it couldn’t leech into my other food that I did like. On top of that, it was a vegetable and as a kid, all vegetables tasted like newly cut grass to me. Vegetables were vile weeds.

The Italians revolve around food. We Irish used the food as an excuse to drink beer. As dinner was finished, we kids would be chased from the table so the adults could do what they really wanted to do on Tday, drink. My Dad, Mom, Grandparents and the occasional Uncle would sit there getting gooned. Though my Mom was a lightweight, she couldn’t handle more than three Narragansett beers total. My Uncle on the other hand could drink the brewery.

As we got older, Thanksgiving day meant getting sloshed ourselves. My brother and I would attend the yearly St Raphael/Tolman HS football game at McCoy stadium at 10 am. We did this for three years and each time we’d smuggle in the cheapest Popov vodka. We two weren’t the only ones in the crowd who were feeling no pain. I can remember a kid I knew in high school, Tim C., who fell down the stairs at McCoy and didn‘t feel a thing.
  
Ever drink yourself into oblivion at 11am? You can if your 15. You’re far too dumb to know otherwise. One time, my brother and I became soo drunk, that we got lost driving home from McCoy stadium. Want to know how bad that is? McCoy stadium is about 1/2 of a mile from my house and my brother was too silly drunk to figure out the drive. That was back when you could drive completely sloshed without much fear of being charged with DWI. Boy, how things have changed!

In our 20’s, Tday was becoming a hindrance to us. My brother and I would bolt the food down and head out of the door as we had “better things to do” than hang around with the parents and grandparents who were boring anyway. Again, culture comes into it. We Irish have “roving wakes” and roving Tday parties. We go from house to house to visit friends and have a drink or two. We’d be offered food but of course, that’s not what Tday is for…is it? Well, not for Pawtucket Irish it wasn’t.

It wasn’t until I was working in Western Cranston did I see what a “real” Thanksgiving was. Cranston is full of Italians and when I was working there, I saw the spread these people put out! I was amazed! These people used beer and wine to wash down the buckets of food they’d prepare and DEMAND you eat.

Let me tell you how bad the Irish are. I thought ravioli came from a can till I attended a Tday party on Phoenix ave in Cranston in 1987. Provolone cheese? I thought there was only “Kraft” cheese! There was course after course of food and very little drinking, now how weird is that?

So, enjoy your Tday, watch the Macy’s Day parade. And if you’re going to drink, pass out on the floor and become the joke to your family, it’s cheaper than hiring a lawyer. 

Misheard Lyrics and The Neighborhood

I can remember someone of importance in the Reagan administration mentioning that Springsteen’s “Born in the USA” was Reagan’s favorite song. The official said it was a high energy, uplifting song that exemplified the greatness of America. However, some DJ once commented that if you read the lyrics to that song, it had nothing whatsoever in it that was uplifting about America at all. Sure, the song is energetic and the refrain “born in the usa” being repeated over and over again does sound patriotic. But…as that DJ mentioned…

In an ironic sense, the Reagan administration sure picked the song that encapsulated America at that time.

*****

Speaking of Vietnam vets, I never knew one personally. I barely remember one that was blown to bits and was a neighbor when I was just a tiny kid. That would’ve been Michael Dalton.

Patrick and I were playing in the street by the curb (yes, our parents thought the street was a safe place to play, it was 1971) when we were about six years old. I overheard Mr Robinson and Mr Jeffries discussing a funeral they had to attend. They spoke in hushed tones but I managed to pick up on some of the phrases.

“Jan, did you know it’s a closed casket?” and another phrase I heard, “Damn, half the torso?”

Mind you my idea of death was what cowboys did after killing 200 Indians first. The cowboy gets shot, grabbed his chest, slumped over and died a hero. I never knew what the word “torso” was but what do you know of anatomy at six?

I found out years later Michael Dalton was blow up by a booby trapped Viet Cong defense complex they had earlier fled. It was one of their nasty tricks, wire an abandoned military position to explode if it was tampered with by the enemy. And poor Michael tampered with it just enough…

Later on that year, we kids romped through the neighborhood on Halloween. As we approached the darkened Dalton house, the parents ushering us told us all to quiet down. One of the younger ones of us asked why we couldn’t ring their doorbell and get candy. The parents ignored the question and pointed out the Britt family across the street always had tons of candy and we all stormed that house instead. We never heard from the Dalton family much again after that.

Michael Dalton